OEN Swapmeet

The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network held a get-together at the Someday Lounge on NW 5th Ave in downtown Portland Thursday evening. I talked with several people there:

• There were a couple of kids from Detroit, fresh out of school in Kalamazoo. One was looking to find some work with a non-profit organization. They did their research and decided they wanted to come to Portland.
• A Financial Advisor from Wachovia Securities in Vancouver, formerly A.G. Edwards, formerly Washington Mutual, soon to be Wells Fargo.
• The HR (Hungarian Royalty, aka Human Resources) who always responds terrible when people ask him how he is.
• The IP (Intellectual Property) Lawyer, who despises the companies who make their living by threatening to sue people who they claim have infringed on their patents, and then settle for ten grand, because it's cheaper than hiring a lawyer. Got his undergraduate degree at Williams College in Massachusetts.
  
• A fellow who ran the blimp manufacturing facility in Hillsboro.
  
• the woman Optometrist looking to grow her business.
  
• Gia, the commercial printer, who considers graphic artists her best friend.
• Another gal who does marketing production. Organizes product launches and marketing campaigns.
• the accountant, whom I didn't get to talk to much.

Turns out the HR guy and the IP Lawyer both had a smattering of Japanese. They held a long conversation that turned out to be nothing more than something along the lines of "Hi, how are you? The weather is fine." To the rest of us it was completely incomprehensible. Spooky how suspicious you can become when you don't understand what people are saying, or maybe that's just me.

I quickly ran out of steam and then I noticed that the Trailblazers (our local basketball team) were starting a game, and if I left now I would be home in time to see the end of the game, so I packed it in and headed for the train.

Normally on train rides, I read, but I had finished my most recent book on the way in, so on the way back I was free to look around. I noticed:

• pairs of signs along the tracks as the train approached the tunnel. The upper sign said "WALK ZONE". The lower one said "NO TRESPASSING".
• the police were checking for tickets from people getting off the train at the Sunset Transit Center. Then they got on the train and checked for tickets en-route to the Beaverton Transit Center. First time I had encountered this. Fortunately I had purchased tickets for today's travels. The woman I was sitting across from had a one year pass that she used to commute to work in downtown Portland from Gresham. The pass costs $120, which is like a tenth of what buying daily tickets would cost.
  
• A big bunch of logs lying in a slue alongside the tracks in Hillsboro. Last week I was at TechShop PDX, and they have a log reclaiming operation. They take the odd lots of logs that are too small for the big lumber companies to deal with and turn them into lumber.
• A new building under construction. It was being sheathed with GlasRoc, which is fiberglass reinforced plasterboard. It was white with big blue logos printed on it. Hadn't seen it before. I had seen the building before. It is three or so stories tall, and the concrete floors were poured in place. Last time I saw it the interior was a forest of temporary steel jacks. Now the jacks are all gone and the mechanical people (air conditioning, plumbing, electrical) are having a hay day.
• There is a plastic looking igloo shaped structure in back of Intel's Hawthorne Farms building. There were a couple of antennae looking structures there as well, which makes me think they use it for RF (radio frequency) emissions testing.

There was still ten minutes on the game clock when I got home, but the Blazers were getting trounced. I sat through the rest of it, but it was pretty obvious it was all over. They did manage to rally for a bit and pulled within ten points of the Rockets, but that was as close as they got. Better luck next year, guys.